2 Dollar Productions

"The road goes on forever
and the party never ends," - Robert Earl Keen

The deed is done, the fat is in the fire and I'm leaving for the Austin airport to catch a plane bound for New York City.


I still don't believe the day has arrived as this brutal odyssey began so long ago that the details seem fuzzy around the edges. Maybe a brief timeline will help:

Spring 2005 - While working as a personal trainer in Plano, I stumble into a some fitness modeling gigs that landed me in fitness brochures, catalogues and on a few box covers for a chest expander and exercise ball. It seemed like easy money at the time.

Summer 2005 - Catch the attention of a photographer shooting a coffee-table book for fitness models, who shoots me outside at a park in Dallas for what I imagine to be a volume of material that will circulate in gay bathhouses around the world. To my knowledge, the book has never been published.

Late Summer 2005 - But the photographer sends my pictures to a New York modeling agent, who takes an interest and we meet in Dallas at a modeling convention where people are paying $700 a piece to hear him speak (among others). He said I needed to improve my chest/abs, but that I had a "commercial look" that could possibly sell in New York.

Summer 2006 - Meet agent again in Dallas for another convention, and am told that I'm "very close" but still need to bring up a few areas and improve overall hardness and detail.

Until that point, this pursuit had been a mere hobby, something that was good motivation to work out and eat right, yet it soon morphed into an entirely different animal when I decided to make it an actual project. I'm still not certain what spurred me onward as I could have easily side-stepped the whole endeavor and simply moved onto other prospects as I wasn't lacking in them.

But I didn't.

I wanted to prove to myself that I had the discipline for the undertaking. I also wanted to be in the best shape of my life when I turned 30. It was a combination of those two principles that drove me from June 2006 to February 2007.

That is a long time to be consumed by anything, much less something that is not a life-long passion as I never dreamed of modeling like Gisele as a kid. Maybe chasing Gisele down the runway, but not doing the actual gig itself.


Actually, it was probably Elle McPherson I lusted after during my formative years, but that's neither here nor there.


For the past 8 1/2 months, this project has slowly consumed me. It's been largely a solitary pursuit as the rigid diet and workout schedule made social interactions questionable and everything was based on the clock, due to the fact that I needed to eat every 3 hours.

This has caused a significant life-sized disruption. I have neglected my friends, family, wife, my writing and virtually anyone outside of the front desk girls at the gym and my nutritionist. Lately, I guess you could add the staff at Palm Beach Tan into the latter mix, for good or ill.

Obviously this is a poor way to live and simply not sustainable over the long haul, and now that I'm approaching the end I'm not sure how I feel about the trade-offs and compromises along the way.

That being said, I have proved something to myself, which in my estimation, is always the best person to please because if you're looking for validation from other people for your own sense of self-worth, then you're probably going to be very disatisfied with life (and yes, I can appreciate the irony of that last statement given the fact that modeling is entirely based on the opinion of others).

But screw pondering this saga too deeply. Hell, nobody should feel sorry for someone who voluntarily places themselves in harm's way - especially when the end goal is not solving world hunger or curing cancer, but merely for a long shot at easy money that has proven to be anything but easy.

I'm still not sure what I'm even going to be doing in New York except "living the life of a model" for a 4 days, but the agent said for me not worry because "he's got this down to a science."

I suppose I'll know soon enough, but I envision me running around the city for casting calls, meeting photographers, being told that I need to get my chest bigger and trying to keep the smirk off my face the entire time. We'll see.

Regardless, it's been a long and winding road that is reaching its zenith, a logical end where the result doesn't matter as much to me as the journey it took to get here.

Here is the transformation in pictures, and until I return on Feb. 23rd, $2 Dollar Productions will be on temporary hiatus.









Everyone have a good week because with any luck at all, I will have some stories to share upon my return.

-BDS